We Are Still Here, We Are Still Us
by WolfieOnFF
Summary: In the immediate aftermath of the averted Apocalypse, Aziraphale and Crowley are both left reeling, and uncertain of What Happens Next. But the one thing they do still have is each other. The one thing that might be said with any certainty is: We are still here. We are still us. Gap-filler Book!Canon Good Omens story, following the immediate post-Nahmaggedon fallout.
1. An Apocalpse, Averted

**_Adam moved one hand around in a blurred half circle._**

**_...and Aziraphale and Crowley felt the world change…_**

Crowley and Aziraphale drew back their wings as Adam's father - Adam's _human _father, that is - got out of his car. He began talking, but neither Aziraphale nor Crowley were paying any attention. They were still a bit dazed, truth be told. They stood off to one side of the assembled humans in silence, still hand in hand, and watched as Adam and his friends raced off on their bikes, heedless of Mr Young's reprimands. Adam's father shook his head after them, wearing an expression which suggested that the Antichrist was going to be looking at a week of no desserts after tea _and _no pocket money for a month.

The sun hung low in the heavens. The sky was flooded with a deepening bruised purple and punctured with with fading reds; the colour of cooling iron or subsiding anger or an Apocalypse, averted.

It had been a_ very _long day, Aziraphale thought to himself as he watched Sergeant Shadwell and Madame Tracy clamber back onto her rickety old scooter and ride off into the sunset together. Aziraphale found himself hoping, albeit idly and in a way that was doubtless little more than a self-preservation mechanism to avoid thinking about the myriad more _pressing _things vying for attention in his mind, that they would be happy together. It was good that they had each other, he felt. It was good not to have to feel entirely alone in the universe. Good to have someone who understood you, no matter how different you might be from them. How different you might once have thought you were. He and Crowley would have to take the both of them out to dinner some time.

It had been a very long _week_, Crowley thought to himself as he stared dully at the mad book girl with the bike and a young-ish man that he didn't recognise at all, as they headed off the airstrip looking slightly dazed and mildly traumatised. Crowley empathised. He was an occult creature and_he _was feeling _more than _slightly dazed and _more than _mildly traumatised. He'd feel quite sorry for the humans for all of this, this, whatever _this _had been, were he not so preoccupied with feeling sorry for _himself_. The Book Girl and her Boy walked away together, arm in arm. At least they had each other, Crowley thought. That's important. To have an anchor. Another consciousness to debrief with and to question the universe with and to try to move forwards with. Highly necessary, he thought. With any luck, neither he nor Aziraphale would ever have to see either of them ever again.

The air, though heavy and residually oppressive, was at least warm. Heat radiated back up from the tarmac of the airstrip, pulling with it that particular hot-asphalt smell, spiked, on this balmy summer's evening, with the piquant twist of sulphuric hellfire.

Crowley sat down on the ground by the jeep and closed his eyes. He felt Aziraphale sit down next to him.

'You'll wreck your trousers doing that, angel,' he said in a dull and non-committal kind of way.

'Oh, well,' Aziraphale replied.

Aziraphale and Crowley sat like that for a few minutes, leaning back against the side of the jeep, silent and existing somewhere on the other side of panic. They found themselves camped firmly in the strangely peaceful No Man's Land between the neighbouring states of _What The Hell Just Happened _and _Buggered If I Know But I Could Really Use A Drink, No, Better Make It Two_.

Crowley sighed dejectedly and leaned forwards, wrapping his arms around his bent knees and resting his head on his forearms. Aziraphale reached across to pat him on the back. As a gesture, Aziraphale wasn't certain whether it was more to comfort Crowley or himself. It was an anchor to reality. _We are still Here_, it said.

'Are you all right, Crowley?' Aziraphale asked, stupidly but with a great deal of concern.

'No,' the demon replied gloomily and without looking up.

'Ah.'

'Well, or yes. I mean I'm not _dead_, am I?'

'No,' Aziraphale conceded.

'Not yet, anyway.'

'Well.'

Crowley twisted his head to the side and glanced up at the angel, taking a moment to study his careworn face. 'Are you? Okay?'

'I don't think I'm quite sure, yet,' he replied with a sigh. 'Ask me again in a few hours.'

Crowley laughed forlornly and Aziraphale looked down at him with an anemic smile. The demon buried his face back in his arms.

Silence reigned once more. Aziraphale's hand stayed resting on Crowley's back, rising and falling with the demon's breath, thumb stroking absent-minded and reassuring little arcs between his shoulder-blades. Between his now hidden wings.

Aziraphale had always admired Crowley's wings. His own were always rather scruffy; a shade of tea-stained cream rather than the brilliant white of most other angels. Crowley's wings were black. At first Aziraphale had wondered whether this was because he was a demon, but he'd soon learned that it was, in fact, because he was _Crowley_. And, truly, his wings weren't _black _at all, but shades of indigo and copper, lavender and emerald, and rose, and gunmetal, and pearl, and gold, myriad colours cast in shades so dark that they merely _appeared _black until the light hit them in a certain way and suddenly the colours _shone_. His wings were iridescent. And he kept them so well-groomed, too. Never a feather out of place. Always perfectly pristine, and so glossy that they almost looked as though they were glittering. Almost looked like they reflected the stars. They were beautiful.

Aziraphale's feathers, on the other hand (or, as it were, on the other wing) were always dishevelled. They had a tendency to shed the little fluffy ones whenever he had them out because he rarely groomed them - at least not more than cursorily. He was just too busy. Who has time for maintaining one's wings when _so many books _are out there waiting to be read? So many concerts to attend? So many restaurants at which to dine? And the vast majority of the time his wings were kept hidden from view in any case, so it was terribly easy to become lax with the whole thing.

Nonetheless, Aziraphale always felt slightly guilty whenever necessity mandated he reveal his wings in front of anyone else, especially in front of other supernatural beings, who he always felt were _judging _him. Except for Crowley, of course. Not that Crowley didn't cast an expert eye over the state of Aziraphale's wings - the angel knew full well that the demon most assuredly did - but rather that Aziraphale didn't particularly _mind. _Not when it was Crowley. Crowley didn't count.

Aziraphale noticed a small handful of his down-feathers a few yards away on the tarmac. They must have fallen out when he'd unfolded them earlier. Fallen out whilst they had rallied themselves to face down Satan himself. _Good lord _, he thought to himself. _Was that really us? Did we really do that? _Aziraphale stared hollowly at the feathers as they were jostled around by the gentle evening breeze, and winced at the realisation. Those little feathers seemed nothing if not a testament to his own vulnerability. He was a Principality, yes, and a deeply formidable creature in his own right, but up against _Lucifer himself_… Well.

It had been a rather strange day.

'I don't know about you,' Aziraphale murmured, half to Crowley, half to himself, 'but I could do with a drink.'

Crowley felt Aziraphale's hand slide from his back. Its removal was shortly followed the _thwunk! _of a cork being pulled from a wine bottle of undoubtedly excellent vintage. Crowley raised his head, the edges of his mouth twitching in spite of his low spirits as he watched the angel take a hefty slug of alcohol straight from the bottle.

'Oi. Save some for the rest of us,' Crowley taunted.

'I'm hardly likely to down an entire bottle in one fell swoop, dear boy,' Aziraphale replied testily, playing their well-worn game with ease. 'Do try to be sensible.'

Crowley suppressed a grin and scowled instead. The game had rules, after all. And right now they were a sort of an anchor, too. _We are still Us, _they said.

'I _am _being sensible. I've seen you drink, angel. An incorrigible delinquent, that's what you are. You're worse than me.'

'Oh, well,' Aziraphale said with a pseudo-sympathetic pout and a wicked glint in his eye, '_that's _not terribly difficult, is it?'

Crowley flinched, clutching his hand to his chest as though he had been shot. 'Oh, _ouch_, Aziraphale, _ouch_. Kick a dog while he's down, why don't you? Thought you were supposed to be the _nice _one.'

Aziraphale broke at that and spluttered a laugh just as Crowley knew he would, even though it hadn't been that funny. Aziraphale had an odd sense of humour. Just as odd as Crowley's own, really. The demon smirked triumphantly at his win (because making the other laugh first was always the top prize), but his gaze stayed soft and attentive behind his dark glasses as his eyes flickered over the angel's face.

'Here you go.' Aziraphale carefully wiped the rim of the bottle and held it out. 'Plenty left, I assure you.'

Crowley reached for the wine but instead of taking it straight away, he tentatively placed his hand over the angel's and squeezed. The smile had all but vanished from the demon's face, replaced by an expression entirely more sombre, entirely more pained, and entirely more vulnerable. It was an expression that said an awful lot without Crowley having to speak a single word. It said a great deal more, and said it a great deal more eloquently, than words ever could have. The closest approximation of a translation into English would, however, have been:

_This whole thing fucking sucks. And I'm really bloody tired. And really bloody confused. And still pretty damn frightened, to be honest. _

Aziraphale sighed and nodded in understanding. In agreement. In solidarity.

_Yes, _the nod said. _I know. Me too, dear boy. Me too. _

Crowley took the bottle and took a long drink, then took himself back to his curled and protected position, his arms wrapped around his legs and his face hidden.

They sat like that for a long time, Crowley folded over on himself, Aziraphale next to him quietly reeling in the fast-approaching darkness. Both thinking a lot, both feeling a lot, and both drinking a lot less than they really wanted to. Sobriety was pounding like a bad hangover, but somehow they both knew that this time getting drunk wouldn't really help.

'I just don't particularly _feel _like we've _won_,' Crowley muttered, eventually. 'We haven't _lost _, or at least we haven't been, you know, mmm, we aren't _dead… _And the world is still here, more or less, but…" He lifted his head so that his chin was resting on the back of his hands, and he stared out across the runway and into the night. 'I don't feel particularly _triumphant.' _

'Yes. I think I know what you mean,' Aziraphale replied.

'It doesn't feel _finished_. Or— Oh, I don't know.' Crowley shook his head and huffed a slightly deranged laugh. '_I don't know _! I don't think I know _anything_, anymore. Least of all _what happens next_…'

Aziraphale put his hand back on Crowley's shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze as the demon re-buried his face in his hands.

'The boy, Adam, he did tell us we didn't have to worry…' Aziraphale said tentatively.

'Yeah. He also stared at me so hard I thought my head was going to implode beneath the weight of it. _I know all about you two_, that's what he said. Brilliant. I believe him, too. He does know. He knows all of it. Both of us. All of it… Ngk.'

'I'm sure he wouldn't—'

'_Too much messin' around_, he said. That was about _us_. And he _wasn't happy _about it.' Crowley jerked his head back up and stared intently at the angel. 'Have we really been that wrong, all these years? We always rationalised it so well... It made _sense_, you know? _You_ _know_, right?' The demon swallowed and shook his head a little desperately, searching the angel's face for answers he didn't have.

'I'm not sure,' Aziraphale shrugged. 'I thought I did. I thought it made sense, I thought we were-'

'But it _does _make sense,' Crowley interrupted. 'It _did _. In order for _The Best Good _to exist, _The Worst Evil _must by definition exist too. That's just…' he waved his hands vaguely, '_logic.' _

Aziraphale nodded. 'Whatever the worst possible thing imaginable is, the thing that is furthest from that must be the most good. Without the potential to do the most bad, there is no potential to do the most good, or, rather, it simply wouldn't exist to begin with, er…'

'If no one has choices,' Crowley said, continuing this train of thought, 'if no one has the _choice _to do _bad _, then no one can do _good _. Because without the chance to do bad _or _good, they would be nothing more than, I don't know, _automatons_, doing whatever they're programmed to do. The whole point of it _all _is _choice_. Giving _them _choice. Right?'

'Certainly,' the angel muttered uncertainly.'

'And really all _we _were doing was providing the_opportunities _for people to make those choices… A little encouraging here and there, perhaps, but…'

Aziraphale met Crowley's eye, a doubtful expression creeping across his face. Both of them knew just how pathetic that was as a justification. Both of them had known that for a _long _time. It had always been easier not to think about it too seriously. It wasn't so easy, now.

'I suppose the question would be—' Aziraphale began,

' -whether humans actually needed "_encouraging". _' Crowley finished with a dejected glower. 'Isn't the whole point that they created the choice to choose for themselves, when they left Eden? Isn't that why _they _were the ones who were punished and cast out? Because Adam and Eve _chose_?'

Aziraphale drew his eyebrows together, looking a little unwell. 'Implying, therefore, that choice exists inherently within the human condition. A prerequisite for their very existence…'

'...In which case,' Crowley continued, although he looked as though he really didn't want to, 'all we were doing was—'

'- messin' them about.'

'_ Ineffable_,' Crowley grimaced.

'Ineffable,' Aziraphale agreed.

The sun had by now dipped far below the horizon, and the sky was cooling into the rich dark blue of late summer nights. Out here, far from the lights of the city, the stars glittered.

A small, fluffy, off-white feather skipped along the ground, carried by the breeze. A sudden stronger gust lifted it up into the air, looping and fluttering, stark against the starry sky. Crowley reached out and caught it.

'I suppose we'll have to stop all that, now,' Aziraphale pondered aloud from out of the blue.

'Hm?'

'Our, well, our_ jobs_, I mean. Fairly certain that what we just did was the equivalent of _handing in our notice_.'

'Oh, right,' Crowley replied glumly, running his thumb gently over the downy feather. 'Probably.' He sniffed and sat up a little straighter, depositing the feather fastidiously in his jacket pocket. 'Although to make the metaphor a bit more _nice and accurate_, it was probably more like walking up to your boss, flipping him off, and lighting his desk on fire. But I see your point.'

'I'm not really sure how it would work anymore anyway, even if we did keep, um, _messin' about_, 'Aziraphale mused. ' I'm fairly certain that Heaven are _not _going to welcome any of my reports with open arms, after this...'

'Ngk. Yeah… Pretty sure Hell won't want me _winning souls _for them anymore, either.'

'Honestly I'm not sure that I would_ want _to work for Heaven, after that egregious display.'

'Mm.'

'I suppose we're on our own, then,' Aziraphale said with a nervous smile. 'Unemployed, as it were.'

'On our own,' Crowley echoed. 'Gosh. Although I'd prefer it if we called ourselves _freelance, _rather than _unemployed_. Very fashionable these days, freelancing,' he said in a tone as light as his heart felt heavy, and Aziraphale laughed.

They both turned back to stare up into the fathomless, starry heavens. They sat that way for a long while, quiet and contemplative, before Crowley finally spoke once more.

'Do you think he meant it?'

'Hm? Aziraphale blinked out of his reverie and turned to his friend. 'What was that?'

'The boy. The Antichrist. Adam. He said that we didn't have to worry. What do you think he meant?'

Aziraphale shrugged. 'I suppose we'll find out.'

Crowley grimaced. 'Suppose so.'

'I think we can trust him, though. He seems like a sensible, honest young man.'

'Angel, he's Satan's son.'

'And Satan is God's son,' Aziraphale replied with a shrug. 'I'm rather coming around to the idea that one's place of origin holds very little weight when it comes to one's, shall we say, _moral compass_.'

'Nurture, not nature,' Crowley agreed.

'_Choice_,' the angel replied. 'Choice.'

'Well, let's hope the boy_ chooses _not to evaporate us or erase us from history and existence altogether, or _whatever_,' Crowley said with a shiver.

Aziraphale frowned and moved his hand to the demon's far shoulder. Keeping his arm wrapped firmly,_ protectively, _around him, Aziraphale gently pulled the demon closer, and Crowley let him.

'I'm sure it won't come to that, my dear,' the angel murmured softly as Crowley leaned against him.

'Are you, though?' the demon asked, twisting his neck to look up at his friend, eyebrows drawn tautly together. 'How can you be sure of anything, after all of this?'

Crowley felt Aziraphale's body stiffen, and could have sworn that his grip around him tightened just a little.

'If he even _considers _doing anything to you, to _us_, I'll-' the angel hesitated. '-I'll have a very stern word with his father.'

Crowley raised an eyebrow.

'Er, his human father, that is,' Aziraphale added quickly.

'Well,' Crowley replied, 'let's hope such _extreme measures _don't prove necessary.'

The warmth of the day had dissipated, leaving a biting chill in the night air. Crowley didn't like the cold. He shifted slightly in order to tuck himself in closer against Aziraphale, leaning against the warmth of the angel instead of the cool metal of the jeep. He felt Aziraphale's chin come to rest on the top of his head. Taking back the bottle of wine, Crowley took a contemplative sip.

'Angel?'

'Mm?'

'Where do you think God has been, in all of this? Doesn't His silence strike you as at all _odd _?'

'Do you remember,' Aziraphale said slowly, 'the day that Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden?'

'Obviously. Bit bloody difficult to forget something like that... What are you getting at?'

'When you came and spoke to me after it all, you wondered what God was planning. Said it was all a bit of a pantomime. _Not very subtle _, I believe were your exact words.'

'Well, it wasn't, was it?'

'Not really, no. In point of fact, one might speculate that it was _calculatedly _so, don't you think? That the entire situation was serendipitously _un-_subtle. As you said, a _pantomime_.'

'What's your point?'

'Not sure I have one, yet,' Aziraphale sighed. He took the bottle back from the demon leaning against him and swallowed another mouthful of wine. 'Could be that it wasn't quite a pantomime, precisely,' he continued. 'Not with a _script_, per se, but…' He shook his head uncertainly. 'Could have been that God simply had an idea in mind for it all and prepared the set, so to speak. Then we all just lived up to His expectations. Improvised as anticipated.' He sighed, and raised the bottle to his lips, stopping before it reached them. 'Or perhaps we didn't.'

'Hmmm… it makes you wonder whether we _ever _had any _real _choice,' Crowley said, staring up into the sky. 'I mean, take your sword, for example. You _chose _to give that away, back in Eden, but then, whoops, there it is again, showing up at the end of the world, central role in the performance of the century. Performance of _all _centuries. There at the Beginning, and there at the End, in your hand. And with _your _hand in _my _hand, both of us, again, at the Beginning and the End, helping the humans _defy God.._.' Crowley shook his head. 'It's all too _neat, _and it's all too, too, too- And _why?_ What's the point? What's the point of any of it?'

_God works in mysterious ways_, as they say,' the angel said expansively, taking another sip of wine. 'Humanity came out rather well in the end, though, don't you think? Faced adversity with kindness and courage. Made good use of that _Free Will _ you've had such a hand in encouraging. Regardless of Heaven and Hell's opinions of humankind, one can't help but wonder whether God must be just a little proud of how His creations turned out. Perhaps that was always the- what is the colourful phrase you use? _End game_?' Aziraphale shrugged.

'Hmm.'

'That is the problem with ineffability, of course. It's all a bit, erm, _ineffable_.'

**_'Are you saying,' said Crowley, 'that He planned it this way all along? From the very Beginning?'_**

**_Aziraphale conscientiously wiped the top of the bottle and passed it back._**

**_'Could have,' he said. 'Could have. One could always ask Him, I suppose.'_**


	2. Arbitrary Delineations of Time

~⧖~

A man arrived in a van, wearing a uniform which said _ International Express _on it.

Aziraphale and Crowley watched him as he went around carefully collecting the accoutrements of the fallen Horsemen, placing them into a cardboard box. He had come over to the pensive pair, eventually, asking about the sword. Which, of course, Aziraphale still had in his possession. Crowley grinned to himself as the angel got into a bit of a tizzy looking around for it, before finally realising that he had in fact been _ sitting _ on the bloody thing for the past… _ however long _ they had been there.

How long _ had _ they been there, Crowley found himself wondering? He glanced at his ludicrously expensive watch and raised an eyebrow. Gone midnight… That meant it was _ Sunday _.

Crowley exhaled slowly.

Sunday.

It was a completely arbitrary delineation of time, of course. Crowley knew that. Nothing more than humanity's attempt to impose some order on a universe which, to them (and, in all honesty, to Crowley most of the time, too), seemed otherwise too chaotic to comprehend. It was meaningless, really.

But somehow it made him feel a little better to know that they had left that Saturday behind them. Officially. Sort of.

Even though that really meant nothing in reality - after all, nothing was truly settled. The dust kicked up by both Sides was still hanging in the air, heavy and murky and obscuring everything that lay beyond it. Nothing was safe, not in the long term, least of all them. Perhaps not even in the short term, for all Crowley knew. This was all very uncharted territory for everyone, and they were all still holding their breath, waiting to see where they were standing once all of that dust finally settled.

So, no, really it meant very little that the clock had ticked them over into Sunday. It meant so little that it may as well have meant nothing. It was almost completely irrelevant.

Almost, but not quite.

Because it did mean _ something. _

It meant that no matter what happened from here on out, they had at least survived _ The Day The World Was Supposed To End _. It meant that they had come out the other side of that Saturday more or less intact. There was a strange liberation in that. A defiance, of sorts. It made Crowley feel weirdly and almost manically euphoric. And that uneasy euphoria almost balanced out the residual and anticipatory anxiety wracking his beleaguered spirit. It almost chased away the exhaustion weighing on his mind, body, and soul, it almost lifted him up and jolted his bruised and battered optimism back to life.

Almost, anyway.

The _ International Express _driver left.

** _Crowley stood up, a little unsteadily. He reached a hand down to Aziraphale._ **

** _'Come on,' he said. 'I'll drive us back to London._ **

Aziraphale paused before taking the offered hand, taking a moment to look up at Crowley. The demon. His long-time enemy. His longer-time friend. The creature standing over him in the starlight.

The angel suddenly felt as though he hadn't taken a proper look at the demon since, since- since he didn't know when, actually. Time, never quite as rigid for angels as for humans, had become even more warped in the days leading up to Armageddon. It felt like a thousand years since Aziraphale had been sitting in his bookshop, poring over _ The Nice And Accurate Prophecies _ , desperately searching for an answer, a direction, some hint of _ anything _ that could help get them all out of this mess.

And yet it felt like barely a week had passed since he and Crowley had been strolling companionably through the hanging gardens of Babylon. Or since they had been laughing in an up-market taverna in Baiae, or sharing stories with Chaucer, or whispering to each other in the _ Globe _ about how Shakespeare was definitely ripping off Thomas Kyd... It only felt like _ yesterday _that they had been sitting drunk in his back room, figuring out how they would foil Heaven and Hell and avert the Apocalypse together. And yet at the same time that also felt like a hundred lifetimes ago.

That hadn't really gone as they'd expected, had it? Their brilliant _ plan _. Colossal disaster from start to finish.

Except… it hadn't been, had it? Somehow. Because here they were, somehow. Here was _ everything _ , somehow. _ Existing _ , still, and in spite of everything. Perhaps even in spite of _ God _ . Whatever happened next, right here and right now, they _ were _ . Six thousand years balanced in one moment; an eternity and a nanosecond all at once; the Beginning and the End in a loop, an ouroboros, infinite, infrangible, _ ineffable _ … Somehow. _ Somehow. _

'Angel? You all right?'

'Hm?'

Aziraphale blinked.

Yes, time was a funny thing, and the angel determined to take some of it back right now. Now that he had some breathing space. Now that he had some to spare - and _God_ _knows_ he was owed it.

And Aziraphale wanted, Aziraphale _ needed _ to spend it just _ looking _ at his friend. Just for a moment. Just for a few, a meagre, a fleeting handful of seconds. Was that so much to ask for? The chance to take stock? To take the opportunity, so nearly lost forever, to take in this irascible creature who, truth be told - and what use was denying the truth now? - he loved so very, very much?

The angel looked up at the demon, in the darkness. In the starlight. In the sunglasses in the middle of the night. In the expensive and perfectly tailored suit that was now charred and reeking of smoke. With his hair, normally glossy and enviable, now a complete mess and singed on the ends. With the face, gaunt and exhausted and filthy, a thick, black smudge decorating one cheek, another across the bridge of his sharp nose. With the hand, outstretched, as grimy as his suit and hair and face, black nail polish chipped, knuckles grazed, and waiting for the angel to take it.

And the angel took it, gladly.

And as he did, he thought to himself that Crowley had never looked so terrible.

Crowley had never looked so beautiful.

Crowley had never looked so _ alive _.

_ We are still here. _

_ We are still us. _

And as a wave of unadulterated _ relief _ flooded through Aziraphale's not-quite-human body, he couldn't help but laugh at it all.

'What?' Crowley frowned.

The angel's smile shone incandescent as he leveraged his weight against the demon's hand and pulled himself gracelessly to his feet.

'What? Stop _ smiling _.'

Aziraphale stood in front of Crowley and he emphatically _ did not _ stop smiling. Raising his free hand, Aziraphale gently lifted the demon's chin and ran his thumb carefully over his cheek. Crowley raised an eyebrow, sardonic and amused and just a smidge of_something else__, _but he remained silent.

'My dear, dear boy,' Aziraphale said softly, 'are you aware that you look an absolute _ wreck? _''

The angel held up his thumb, which was now streaked with black grime, and laughed.

Crowley grimaced and his own hand shot up to his face, scrubbing at it with his shirt sleeve and an irritated growl.

'Ugh… Yeah, well, you try running around inside a burning bloody bookshop and then driving a burning bloody Bentley all the way from London across a burning bloody motorway. See how good you look after that,' Crowley protested, glancing between his ash-blackened sleeve and the angel.

Who, he noticed, was suddenly standing very still.

Crowley frowned. 'You all right?'

'Um.'

'Angel? What?''

'Um-' Aziraphale shook his head and blinked. 'Sorry, I didn't quite- Did you, uh, did you say, um- _ Burning bookshop _?'


	3. Adagio et Staccato

'Um-' Aziraphale shook his head and blinked. 'Sorry, I didn't quite- Did you, uh, did you say, um- _Burning bookshop_?'

'What? What do you- Ah.'

Crowley was not usually so slow on the uptake, but it had been a long day. As such, his realisation that the angel had not, in fact, been aware of the fate of his shop prior to his own inopportune and flippant remark, was a few moments late in its arrival. When this realisation did, however, arrive, it made up for lost time with abandon, crashing into Crowley with all the delicacy and tact of a runaway elephant.

_'Shit,' _the demon hissed, cursing his own stupidity. '_Shitshitshitshitshit _. You don't know. You _didn't _know… I thought, I mean, I-I assumed that- Oh, bloody hell! Aziraphale, I'm sorry. I- It- There was a fire, and I… But I thought that- But then, you weren't there, so it must have been after you had- So you didn't- And- Ngk.' Crowley's fingers twitched against his palms as he stumbled, breathless and panic-stricken, over his words. 'It... It burned down.'

Aziraphale pressed the back of his hand against his forehead. He'd gone a bit pale.

'My bookshop?'

'Mmhm. Yeah. Yes. I- Yeah. I am _so sorry, _Aziraphale…'

Aziraphale closed his eyes.

The bookshop. _His bookshop_. Burned.

_Burned_.

After the week he'd had, Aziraphale had started to believe that _nothing _would be able to catch him off guard. Nothing could surprise him, or wrongfoot him, or leave him nonplussed. After everything he'd seen and done, surely he'd seen and done everything.

He had lost an Antichrist, found an Antichrist, talked to the _Metatron, talked back _to the Metatron, been discorporated and then re-corporated and had possessed several humans in the interim, and he had taken it all, more or less, in his stride. He had flown a bloody _scooter _to _Oxford _, whereupon he had openly and brazenly questioned _The Great Plan_, and stood, armed only with a flaming sword and his best friend, to _face down Satan Himself_. Agnes Nutter hadn't mentioned _that _in her _\- _

Prophecies.

Book.

Bookshop.

_Burned. _

So much, lost…

The originals of John of Patmos' _Revelations_. A hand-signed copy of Mother Shipton's Prophecies. An entire set of Oscar Wilde First Editions. A first draft copy of Petronius' _Satyricon _complete with pithy notes, jokes, and comments in the margins addressed to Aziraphale personally. The real _Gospel of Judas_.

All gone.

This had caught the angel off guard.

This had wrongfooted him.

This had left him most definitely nonplussed.

It was almost too much to fathom.

No, in fact, Aziraphale was prepared to be more decisive than that. It _was _too much to fathom. Definitively fathomless. Eminently and entirely _unfathomable _.

He'd lost his _home_…

'No, no, it's- It's fine,' Aziraphale said, voice doing its utmost best not to break. 'It's just a bookshop, after all. Nothing to- No, far worse things in the world than- No. It's- Not a problem. Tickety-boo.'

The angel attempted a light laugh. It sounded more like a choked sob.

Crowley felt wretched.

'Oh, angel. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to tell you like that, I didn't _think _. I never-'

Crowley stopped as Aziraphale reached out and placed a steadying hand on his arm. He hounded a thin, wan smile onto his stupid angelic face, being _kind _even when the universe was kicking him in the teeth. Being _considerate_, and _caring,_ and _compassionate, _still. After everything. Even now.

It made Crowley want to scream.

'Not your fault, my boy,' Aziraphale continued, shakily. 'Not your fault at all. But is it… Is it all gone? Everything?'

Crowley nodded, looking ill. 'Yeah. It, uh, yeah. Roof collapsed, I'm afraid.'

'You're certain?'

Crowley winced as he was bombarded with flashbacks of crawling around on the floor, soaking wet and a bit on fire, calling out pathetically for Aziraphale and cursing everything and everyone as he tried in vain to stave off his insurmountable, suffocating _panic_...

'Yeah,' Crowley said. 'I'm certain. I- Oh!' He reached a hand into his jacket and pulled the charred and battered copy of _The Nice And Accurate Prophecies _from the inside pocket. 'Here. It- I- I saved it. Er…' He hesitated. 'I know it's not much, but…'

'Oh. Goodness.' The angel swayed slightly on his feet. 'Is that-'

'Agnes Nutter. Yeah.'

'And you- you saved it from the, the-'

'From the fire. Yeah.'

Aziraphale stared blankly at the book in Crowley's hands. 'You saved it,' he repeated.

Crowley shrugged. 'I know it's not, it's not much. I couldn't get anything else, there wasn't time. It was- I wasn't-'

'No. No, don't be ridiculous. Don't _apologise_. I-' Aziraphale had raised his hand in protest, and now drew it back in close, anchoring his palm above his heart. 'Oh, my dear boy. My dear boy.'

_See? You haven't lost everything, _Crowley wanted say. Wanted to whisper as he wrapped the angel up in his arms, wove his fingers through his curls, held him so tightly that the legions of heaven and hell couldn't ever tear them apart, _you have me. You have me, you have me, you have me. You'll always have me, for all the good that that does. For all the use that I am. Oh, angel… _

'Come on,' Crowley said. 'Let's get out of here. Get back to London, and- You can stay with me, if you like. As long as you need. As long as you want. Yeah?'

The angel took a deep breath. 'Yes. Yes, that would be- Yes. Thank you, Crowley. I- Thank you.'

Aziraphale's voice hitched in his throat, and Crowley felt as though he could hardly bear it.

Ridiculous, really, after the week he'd had, that this, that Aziraphale finding out about the shop, finding out about the shop and looking so _sad, _looking so sad and Crowley being so incapable of _doing anything about it, _that this, after everything, this was the thing coming so close to felling him.

Ridiculous.

This was _tiny _compared to everything else.

But, then again, perhaps that was precisely _why_. Because Apocalypses, and burning motorways, and collapsing buildings, and best friends disappearing and reappearing inside colourful women, and Antichrists, and armies, and Satan himself sending lava spewing up from the earth, and- well, that was all _big. _That was all stuff bound up in the grand narrative of the universe, played out on grand stages and with grand players and the grandest of stakes.

And there was, in some rushing, relentless way, a sense that although you were a part of it, it was much, much bigger than you. So much bigger than you that it was somehow less _real_. A sort of story that you were telling yourself, terrifying and imminent and nearly-paralysing, but outside of your usual realm. Outside of your usual reality - or, at least, the reality to which you had become accustomed. These were circumstances so extraordinary, so awesome, so aw_ful_, that somehow you became extraordinary along with them; extraordinarily capable, extraordinarily brave, extraordinarily _extraordinary_. You were dragged along in the slipstream, the sheer insanity of it all somehow making it easier to deal with. Easier to handle. Easier than _impossible, _anyway.

Or, at least, it _must _have done, surely? If it hadn't then how, Crowley asked himself, would he have been able to survive any of it at all? Certainly not of his own volition. Certainly not on his own merit. Crowley was simply not that kind of a person. Or so, at least, he believed.

But this? Aziraphale, standing in front of him, tired, and open, and _raw_, and looking every one of his thousands of years? Now that felt possible. That felt ordinary. That felt small, and personal, and close, and _real. _

And so, far from feeling brave, or capable, or extraordinary, Crowley felt _small_. He felt helpless, and useless, and entirely unworthy of the angel's _thanks _of all things. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to handle this. Any of this. But that was nothing new.

And Crowley was_ tired. _

But the universe keeps spinning.

'Don't mention it,' Crowley muttered darkly. He was ready to leave this Godforsaken place. He was ready to go _home_. 'Come on, angel. Let's get the hell- the heaven-' He growled. '-the _fuck _out of here.'

Aziraphale let Crowley lead him over to the far side of the jeep and bundle him into the passenger's seat. The demon waved a hand and a roof materialised over the formerly open-topped vehicle as he climbed into the driver's seat. It was bad enough that Crowley had to drive back to Mayfair in this military monstrosity; he drew the line at doing so with no roof.

After fumbling blindly in the jeep's glove box, Crowley pulled out a cassette. The label on the case said that it was _Handel's Water Music_. Crowley shoved it into the cassette player, keeping one eye on the angel as he did so. _Handel's Water Music _was one of Aziraphale's favourite suites.

The familiar strains hummed out from the stereo as Crowley snapped his fingers to start the engine. The music was incongruously light, and the cheery refrains danced shamelessly over the heavy atmosphere.

Aziraphale was staring blankly out of the window, deep in thought.

Crowley wanted to say something to him but couldn't think of what, so instead he stayed silent and listened to the music. Perhaps focusing on that, he thought, might make him feel a little better. A welcome distraction from, well, everything.

No such luck. He kept expecting Freddie Mercury's voice to begin belting out over _Adagio et Staccato_, and felt a hollow ache in his chest when Freddie stubbornly refused to cut in.

She had been a _good car_.

They drove in silence for a long while before either of them finally spoke.

'What were you doing in the bookshop?' Aziraphale asked.

'Hm?' Crowley blinked. 'What?'

'You said that you were "_running about inside the burning bookshop _". What on earth were you doing that for?'

Crowley glanced at the angel out of the corner of his eye and gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw twitching nervously. 'Erm.'

'Well?'

Crowley sighed. 'Fine. But don't-' He sighed again, and stared doggedly at the road ahead. He really didn't want to talk about this. 'I, well, I had to make sure you weren't- To check that you had- To see if-' He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. 'I couldn't sense your presence, all right? I- I just wanted to find out what had happened. That's all.'

Crowley felt Aziraphale staring at him, _into _him, and he absolutely did not look back.

'And so you ran in?' the angel said with no small concern. 'Into a burning building? My dear boy, you really must be more careful with-'

Crowley shooed away Aziraphale's words with a wave, taking both hands off of the wheel and making the angel wince. 'Wasn't that big of a deal. I am a demon, after all. Fire is, you know, part of the whole, er, _aesthetic _.'

'Hellfire is _not _the same as _fire _fire, Crowley. Certainly not whilst you are in a human body. And burning buildings are _terribly _dangerous. What if you'd gotten trapped underneath falling debris, or-''

'What was I supposed to do? Hm?' Crowley snapped. 'I had to know that you were- That you weren't- Well. It's a good thing I did, too, because I got that book, didn't I? _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies_. The _Agnes Nutter _one.'

Aziraphale nodded and bit his lip. 'Well. Yes. That is rather- Yes. Of all the books you might have saved, that one is certainly at the top of my list. Terribly rare, that book. Unbelievably rare. Invaluable, in fact.'

'Well, yeah,' Crowley said, side-eying the angel. 'That, and I needed to figure out _what in the world _I was supposed to do next. Where to _go _. Where you had- That was a _slightly _more _pressing _concern than the _Skindle's Price Guide_…'

Aziraphale stared at him dumbly, mouth hanging ever so slightly agape. Under other circumstances Crowley would have been quite smug over catching the angel so off guard. As it was, he merely drooped internally in anticipation of the follow up questions.

'You, you took it deliberately? You figured out- Do you mean to tell me that you _deciphered _Agnes' prophecies? Is that how you knew to come to Tadfield? It is, isn't it? Oh, oh, _Crowley_!'

Crowley shrugged off Aziraphale's admiration. 'It's not that big of a deal, angel, don't start acting as though I decrypted the Voynich Manuscripts, or something. Your notes, remember? You were the one who figured it all out, I just… Well, figured out _your _cryptic mess.' He glanced over at the angel with a smirk in his eyes and a knot in his chest.

Aziraphale made a small sound that came tantalisingly close to a laugh. 'That's almost as impressive a feat,' he admitted.

'Yeah, no shit. Those notes were practically_ unreadable, _angel,' Crowley replied with a strained but sincere grin. 'Thankfully I'm pretty much _fluent _in _Aziraphale. _Lucky thing, eh? Lucky for _me, _at least…'

He'd meant it as a joke. A dig at the angel's propensity for rambling off on esoteric and spuriously related tangents, leaping from one topic to another with no outwardly discernible logic, impossible to follow for all but those to whom the paths of Aziraphale's labyrinthine mind were well-trodden. To all but those who held the thread.

Only, as he said it, it didn't sound so funny. It sounded achingly close to being the kind of confession he always tried (and not always successfully managed…) to avoid. Crowley didn't like being _maudlin _. He didn't like being _soft. _That's not to say he was not those things, as he assuredly was, on occasion, but he certainly didn't _like _it. And neither did he like letting down the walls he'd built to protect himself, not even with the angel, who knew him backwards and forwards. Or, at least, he didn't like letting them down unwittingly. Sometimes he unbarred the door, but only when he _chose _to do so. When he was in control. Not like _this _. Not _haphazardly. _Not when he needed those walls to stay up.

Yet he'd been making a bit of a habit of that of late, hadn't he? Emotional transparency. Crowely supposed that Apocalypses brought that out in a person.

And jokes were always tricky buggers, anyway. Seriously false friends, jokes, you'd think he'd have learned that by now. They had a nasty habit of catching you off guard. They'd distract you out front with promises of cleverness and deflection, whilst all the while unbolting the back door and letting your vulnerabilities and unarticulated wants and broken pieces of your unmasked soul scurry off to freedom whilst you were busy being _funny_.

Because that was what he was really saying, wasn't it? _I understand you. I've learned you, through years of dedicated study. I know you, different as we are. I know how you think. And knowing you saved the world. Knowing you saved _me_. _

He'd only meant it as a joke.

Aziraphale's throat bobbed up and down as he swallowed back whatever words were vying for primacy on his tongue. He looked at Crowley, and he looked away, and when he looked back again once more he looked on the verge of tears.

Again.

_Well, _Crowley thought to himself, _I certainly am handling this _marvellously.

It was only a _joke, _for God's sake. Someone's sake. _His own sake... _

Crowley had, of course, seen Aziraphale cry before. Several times, over the centuries. But that didn't mean he had gotten used to it. Didn't mean he _liked _it. It was unfair, he knew, but Crowley couldn't deny that out of the two of them, Aziraphale was the strong one. Aziraphale was the one who held everything together. The calm one. The one who could be relied upon to take everything in his stride. The sometimes _infuriatingly _placid beacon of practicality and steadiness in circumstances where sane people would be entirely justified in having a complete meltdown. Aziraphale was the living embodiment of _Keep Calm And Carry On_.

The angel did have his moments though, of course. His periodic flurries of existential crisis. His tendency to get irrationally agitated over apparently minor things. His often wilfully ignorant optimism, spurred on, Crowley knew, by the angel's deep-seated discomfort over the steely ruthlessness and unyielding hardness which lay, not always dormant beneath those layers of softness, at the heart of him.

Nevertheless, in spite of these weaknesses (and perhaps _because _of them), the angel was _resilient _. There was something sturdy about him, in the same way that there's something sturdy about those monks who spend years and years living on mountains and sitting in silence and sweeping floors; men who looked as though they could be knocked over by a gust of wind, yet who could stand unmoved before a hurricane.

Aziraphale was the type of person you'd want to have around in a crisis, put it that way. The person who, after some catastrophe or another, would be going around with cups of tea and blankets and biscuits and shoulders wide enough to bear the tears and traumas of every and any needy stranger. With a spirit strong enough to carry their panic and desperation and concerns for a moment, giving them some time to catch their breath. With a heart big enough that he could stand toe-to-toe with disaster and be brave enough to _love nonetheless. _

Crowley couldn't understand it. How the angel could always be so, so, so-

But, of course, he wasn't always, was he? Not always. Not right now.

Glancing between Aziraphale and the road, Crowley tried in vain to think of something, _anything _to say that wasn't woefully inadequate, or painfully stupid, or cringingly inane, or that was simply _brave enough. _

He failed miserably.

And so, instead, he simply reached across and covered the angel's hand with his own. It probably wasn't the best or smartest or most helpful thing to do in the circumstances, the demon thought dejectedly, but it was something he _could _do. He could, and so he did, gladly.

Aziraphale exhaled heavily as though he'd been holding his breath, and he closed his eyes. He turned his hand over beneath Crowley's, interlocking their fingers and squeezing, hard, holding on as though the demon were the only thing keeping him from plunging over some unseen cliff-edge. Holding on as though Crowley was the only thing left worth holding onto.

When the angel opened his eyes again, that horrible _sadness _had been chased away by, well, by something else entirely. Something a lot softer, and a lot brighter, and much, much more familiar.

Slowly and deliberately, Aziraphale leaned in towards the demon, his plump and perfectly manicured fingers still crushing against Crowley's pointed and bony knuckles with an angelic intensity.

And, then, eternally true to form, Aziraphale pointedly placed Crowley's hand back on the steering wheel with a gently chastising nod.

'Safety first, my dear.'


	4. Antiseptic

~⧖~

Aziraphale tried not to be too obvious in his curiosity as he followed the demon into his sleek Mayfair flat but, tired as he was, he found it hard to hide his interest.

The curiosity was to have been expected. Aziraphale hadn't been to Crowley's place since shortly after the demon had moved in, sometime in the late 1940s. He'd last been here on New Year's Day. New Year's Day 1950, if remembered correctly. Although to say New Year's _Day _wasn't strictly _nice or accurate_, as they had in actuality tumbled through the door at around 2:30am, hopelessly drunk and singing _Auld Lang Syne _at the top of their voices.

Aziraphale had spent at least an hour that night, whilst they were still at some little bar or club or _wherever_ it was that they'd ended up, relentlessly insisting that house-warmings were _good luck._ It got to the point where he found himself outright _demanding _that Crowley _absolutely must_ take him up to give him the full tour _or_ _else_. He'd never had to specify what "or else" actually was, as Crowley had capitulated quite easily in the end. Which was rather lucky as the angel had no idea what threat he would have followed through with had Crowley persisted in his recalcitrance.

But, of course, he hadn't. And Aziraphale, of course, had known full well that the demon had always planned on inviting him up to show off his new apartment. Just as he had known too that the demon only played coy because he enjoyed hearing the angel try to be persuasive. Hearing the angel try to _tempt _him. Crowley always was amused by such things.

He hadn't been back since.

But, of course, he'd still had the bookshop, then. He hadn't needed to. They hadn't needed to. Why go anyplace else, when they had the bookshop?

Aziraphale had purchased the bookshop, with no small degree of enthusiasm and excitement, in the autumn of 1799. After a short period of remodelling and unpacking and moving in, by the spring it was open for business.

It didn't take long for the place to become rather more than Aziraphale's dragon-hoard repository. It rapidly became his and Crowley's go-to purlieu. Any time they'd wanted to retire to someplace more private, after dinner, or a concert, or a walk, or _whatever_, they would inevitably end up back at the bookshop. It was convenient, comfortable, and cosy. They became habituated. Aziraphale often wondered whether the demon felt just as at home in the bookshop as he did himself - Crowley certainly always seemed far more at ease in the little backroom than almost anywhere else the angel had seen him.

Aziraphale bent down to take off his shoes, and in doing so was struck with an almost overwhelming dizziness. As he stood back up, he found himself staring out not at Crowley's flat, but into the bookshop. The product of a tired mind, he well knew. Nothing but a memory dragged up through the mire of stress and sadness and exhaustion, but still, he could see it almost as vividly as if he were physically there.

The room was dimly but warmly lit with a few candles and lamps, his old gramophone playing quietly in the background. Bottles of half finished wine on the end table and the floor. A bowl of olives and a near-emptied box of expensive dark chocolates, only the orange ones, which neither of them liked, remaining. Crowley was laying back on the sofa with his shoes kicked off and his jacket discarded. His legs were thrown haphazardly over the arm of the couch, and he was gesturing emphatically with his hands and spilling his drink, staring up at the ceiling as he ranted with much animation.

Aziraphale could even see himself in this vision, seated in his comfortable old armchair with his feet propped up on the coffee table, heedless in his tipsy contentment of scuff marks on the antique oak. He watched himself reach out with an indignant pout to grab just the right book from a nearby stack in order disprove his dear demon's latest disputatious whim. Watched as the demon turned to look at the angel, a laughing grin being teased out with every passage read, every raised eyebrow, every fond glance and twitching half-smile shot in his direction over the much-loved pages of the well-read tome.

Aziraphale watched that perfect moment unfurl unbidden in his memory like tea leaves in a cup. Like the notes of a well-known symphony. The pages of a favourite book.

It was the safest place in the universe.

It was _home_.

Or, rather, it had been.

Not anymore.

No more bookshop.  
No more books.

No more-

'Hey? Angel? You all right there?'

…No. No, that was the wrong way of looking at it, Aziraphale thought, heedless of his friend's words. _Home _wasn't _the bookshop_. Those pleasant memories weren't made of brick and mortar, they were more than that. And he hadn't lost those, had he? They couldn't take _them, _could they? The things that mattered. He still had the things that mattered. The Earth. His life. _Crowley _. And Aziraphale was so grateful, more grateful than he could ever even begin to express. He'd willingly sacrifice _anything _for the preservation of those things, and yet… And yet. And yet this still _hurt _so much. Why did it? It shouldn't _hurt_. It shouldn't-

A tentative hand on his shoulder snapped Aziraphale back to the present. Back to himself. Back to standing in his navy-tartaned socks in Crowley's hallway, in Crowley's flat, under Crowley's unsubtly watchful gaze.

'Aziraphale? Are you okay?'

'What?' Aziraphale blinked and shook his head. 'Oh, yes. Yes. Fine. Fine. I, uh, I like what you've done with the place. Very modern.'

Crowely frowned and the angel turned away.

The flat was indeed modern, that much was certainly true. The general theme of the place seemed to be predicated upon the sleek, the minimal, and the sophisticated. Much like Crowley himself, Aziraphale thought. Whites and dark greys dominated the colour palette, crisp, and clean, one might even say clinical. But the antiseptic sterility of the place seemed only to highlight through contrast the verdant and vivacious bursts of green provided by the lush plantlife which cascaded down the hallway and trailed into the lounge and rooms beyond. Splashes of colour exploded from wild and exotic-looking flowers, blossoming at perfectly patternless intervals. Resplendent and rebellious and evidently much cared-for. Much like Crowley himself.

And yet, plants aside, and in spite of the obvious care that had gone into cultivating such an elegant and ordered flat, the angel really didn't get any sense of _love _for the place. Not like the love they'd both held for the bookshop. Not even like he'd had sensed for the Bentley-

'You can look around, if you want,' Crowley said, cutting into the angel's thoughts once again. 'Before your curiosity discorporates you…'

Aziraphale was inspecting a plant which had caught his eye, running his fingers carefully over a deep-green and yellow-veined leaf which sauntered down from a hanging basket suspended from the ceiling. 'I'm not a cat,' he snipped back, trying hard to buoy himself up. He didn't want to cause Crowley any more concern than he already had done. 'What's this one called?'

'Hm? Oh, er, that's _Devil's Ivy. _I'm not that fond of it, to be honest with you. Only have it here because it doesn't die when kept in the dark, and there's precious little light in this part of the hallway. Hardy bugger, _Devil's Ivy_. Almost impossible to kill. Difficult to get them to flower, though. But I'm working on it.'

Even though Aziraphale was, with some determination, avoiding looking at the demon, he could _feel _his gaze burning into the back of him. Crowley was worried about him. 'Oh, is it? Well, I like it. It's very, uh…' He cast about for a compliment suitable to pay to a plant. '...Very green.'

Crowley sighed. 'I'm going to make a coffee. You want one?'

'Wouldn't say no.'

'All right. Kitchen's this way. Or the lounge is over there. Or… whatever.' Tossing his glasses onto a side-table as he went, Crowley slunk into the kitchen.

Aziraphale trailed along behind him.

Whilst the angel _did _want to look around the place more thoroughly (he _was _insatiably nosy, he couldn't deny it. Crowley hated visiting _National Trust _houses with him thanks to his incorrigible tendency to dip off of the set tour path and disappear into the much more interesting restricted areas, dragging the anxious demon along with him), right now he wanted rather more to stay near to Crowley than to poke around the flat.

Aziraphale wasn't usually this clingy.

But, then again, it hadn't been a particularly usual day.

'Thank you for letting me stay here, Crowley.' The angel leaned back against the pristine kitchen countertop and watched intently as the demon tinkered with a complicated looking coffee machine. 'I do appreciate it. Truly.'

Crowley shrugged. 'Well, what else would you have done?' he said sullenly. 'There's nowhere else to go.'

'I don't know, really,' Aziraphale replied. 'Hotel, I suppose.'

'You hate hotels.'

'Mm.'

'Or at least hotels that don't have five stars and their own spa.'

'Doubt I could have gotten a room in one of those at this hour.'

'Well, then. There you go.'

Crowley turned and handed the angel a latte. It had cinnamon sprinkled on top of it and, if Aziraphale's olfactory senses were as sharp as they usually were, also contained a generous shot of bitter dark chocolate.

_Perfect. _

Aziraphale closed his eyes and took a sip, sighing contentedly. This was another thing to be grateful for. No dark chocolate cinnamon mocha-lattes in Heaven. Probably none in Hell, either. Not the way Crowley made them, anyway. No, this was an entirely earthbound pleasure.

When he opened his eyes again, Aziraphale found Crowley watching him with unconcealed amusement. That was certainly an improvement on badly-concealed concern.

'All right?' the demon asked with a twitching half-smile.

'Perfect. Thank you,' Aziraphale replied warmly. 'You make an _excellent _coffee, dear boy. Positively unmatched.'

Crowley turned back to the machine shaking his head. Aziraphale could have sworn the demon blushed, but he didn't press the point. Crowley still wasn't very good at accepting compliments, even silly little insignificant ones like that. Even after all these years.

The demon made himself a ridiculously strong black coffee into which he dumped several hefty teaspoons of brown sugar, and then leaned back against the counter opposite. They stood in silence for a minute or so, until Crowley spoke.

'Er, not to keep bringing it up, or anything, but I really am sorry. About the bookshop, I mean,' he said. 'I know how important it was to you. To me, too.'

'I know it was, my boy. We spent many a pleasant evening there, you and I, did we not?' Aziraphale raised his mug with a sigh and a weak smile, swallowing down the cloying sadness still snatching at his throat. 'To the bookshop,' he said in toast.

Crowley huffed a sharp laugh and raised his own mug, clinking the ceramic rim against Aziraphale's with a tight-lipped smile. 'To the bookshop.'

'And to the Bentley,' Aziraphale added.

'Yeah. And the Bentley. Rest In Peace, old girl.'

'Quite. Rest In Peace.'

They lowered their mugs and sipped their way into another thoughtful silence.

'We survived, at least,' Aziraphale said after a while.

'Yeah… Er.' Crowley hesitated, pulling at an errant threat on his shirt sleeve.

'Crowley? What is it?'

'Oh. It's nothing, really. Just- Nothing. Forget it.'

'Crowley…'

Aziraphale didn't _do _puppy-dog eyes. He was far too proud to resort to such artless and manipulative tactics. Nevertheless, the look he gave the demon had very much the same affect. And was done with very much the same intention.

Crowley capitulated.

'Do you have to _look _at me like that, angel?' he complained, tossing his head. 'Ugh. Fine. Right. Okay. Er, you see, I, well... You _see _, the, er, the thing is, I- What I mean to say is that the thought had crossed my mind that you might have… Well, that is to say, I had thought you'd maybe… well, _not _survived.' He stumbled over his words as nonchalantly as he could manage, which wasn't very. 'Er.'

Aziraphale blinked. 'Did you? Oh. Golly.'

'I mean, not- That is, when I found your bookshop on fire, and you weren't in it— Although I suppose it was better to find you not in it than to find you in it and- But of course when I realised you weren't in there, and after I'd thought about it for more than a few seconds, I figured you must have gotten away and were off exacting angelic vengeance on whoever had-, or, or, well, I wasn't too worried about you then, is what I mean to say. When I knew you'd at least gotten out.'

The demon was falling over his words, speaking rapidly, avoiding eye contact. Aziraphale stayed silent.

'But when I'd, er, after I'd managed to… You're always telling me to, you know, _not panic_, so I, well, tried not to. Stayed calm. Thought better of it. Remembered that you are quite capable of taking care of yourself. You're a force to be reckoned with when you're fired up, after all-' Crowley winced. '...Poor choice of words. You know what I mean. But, but, you see, when I first pulled up outside and saw all of the smoke and the flames and the _police _and— It was a bit… disconcerting. To say the least.'

'I dare say.'

'But you weren't in there, which was- Well, I mean, good really, although ideally I would have liked to have found you in there, alive, so that I could drag you out by your collar. Then we could've come up with a plan, and- but-'

Crowley shrugged, bristling with unresolved emotion and sharp irritation. He was speaking as though he wasn't entirely sure why he was saying all of this, but couldn't seem to stop himself. Aziraphale listened intently.

'Well. You weren't there, were you? So I was left by myself to try and figure out what on earth I was supposed to do. And then when I was in the car, I don't even know why I was in the car, I didn't know where I was going, but that's when it dawned on me that you really were _out of the equation_. That for all intents and purposes I was completely alone and up the creek without a paddle.' Crowley rubbed the back of his neck. 'I didn't really know what the hell to do at that point, to be honest. Thought crossed my mind to just give up. Accept defeat. Go and get drunk in a nice little restaurant somewhere and just wait for it all to be over. Just end it all. Why not? What hope did I have? What was the point, if you were… er.' Crowley trailed off, dropping his eyes to the floor.

'Oh, Crowley...' Aziraphale murmured, voice laced with far, far too much emotion. He could see that Crowley was on edge and knew that his care and concern, as much as Crowley had clearly been reaching out for it, could just as well push him _over _the edge instead of pulling him back from it. But Aziraphale couldn't help it. It was all he could do not to close the distance between them and wrap the demon in an embrace. 'Oh, my dear boy-''

'I didn't, though,' Crowely cut in quickly. 'Obviously. Because I had the Book, and all your notes, so I didn't have _nothing _. I read them. I figured out where to go. But you already know that. Er. I didn't know _where _you had gone, but I knew that if you were going to end up anywhere, it was probably going to be Tadfield, because that's where _everyone _was going to be, and- Well, you can't win if you're not in the game, can you? And the stakes were so _high _and— And so I couldn't very well do nothing, could I? Not with all _this _at stake.' Crowley glanced out of the window at the London skyline glittering in the darkness. 'When you've got nothing left to lose, _heigh ho _, I suppose. Might as well gun it.'

'"_Gun it" _?'

'Because even if you _were _, um, _gone _,' Crowley persisted, resolutely keeping his voice from shaking, 'I still owed it to everyone else to try to do something, didn't I? I owed it to _you_. We - that is, Heaven and Hell, although I suppose you and me personally a lot of the time too - _we _got them all into this. And if you really had- Well, then you would have- It would have been because you were trying to _stop it all_. And so I couldn't just- Because _even if _I didn't have any _personal _reason left to keep going- Not that I believed that, but-' The demon shook his head and growled. 'Argh. All I mean is that I thought I should probably go and do something about it all. Do something to stop it. Try to, anyway.'

When Aziraphale managed to reply, he did so in a soft voice, saturated with admiration and affection and pride. 'That was very noble of you, Crowely. Very noble indeed.'

Crowley hissed through his teeth and ran a hand through his dishevelled and smoke-soaked hair. 'Yeah, well, don't go telling everyone.'

The demon paused, fingers nervously twisting the fine hair at the nape of his neck. He bit his lip, and Aziraphale tilted his head.'

'It was terribly clever of you, you know,' the angel said gently, 'to figure out where to go on such short notice and under such pressure, my dear. Even with my notes. Agnes' prophecies are terribly circuitous. I had a hell of a time deciphering them, and I had much longer than you did. I really am awfully impressed.' He meant it, too.

'If I never see a bloody _prophecy _ever again,'Crowley snapped, 'it'll be too soon. Why they are so incapable of just saying what they mean is beyond me. Stupid. " _When menne of crocus fromme the Earth and green manne fromme thee Sky, yette Ken not why... _" Yeah, Agnes, I don't bloody _ken. _It's _stupid_, Aziraphale _. _What does that even _mean _?'

''I must say, that is one of the many passages which continues to perplex me,' the angel admitted.

'Yeah, well. Got there in the end, I suppose. Somehow.'

Aziraphale looked carefully across at his friend, standing barefoot, eyes downcast, rumpled, and fire-damaged. Demon or not, Crowley always had had something so _vulnerable _about him. Recently more than ever. And yet look at all he had managed to do. In spite of all the odds against him, all of the very understandable excuses he would have had to throw in the towel, look how he'd held on, kept going, done the _right thing. _Look how _courageous _he had been. Aziraphale was _so proud _of him.

'Mm, that you did, my boy. That you did. Not that I'd have expected any less of you, of course,' he added with a smile. 'You did the right thing.'

Crowley barked a bitter laugh, the sound ricocheting through the quiet of the kitchen like a gunshot. 'Hah! The _right thing _? The "right thing" he says. Bloody hell. Some demon I am, doing _the right thing. _And for all the bloody _good _that it did. I was so helpful, wasn't I? Real _game changer_, my presence. Whole thing would have gone tits up if I weren't there. I made _such _a difference, me and my _doing the right thing_.'

With the palm of his hand Crowley impatiently swept away an intricate pattern he'd been absently drawing in the spilled coffee grounds on the countertop. Unable to stand the distance between them any longer, the angel stepped forward and laid a hand on the demon's arm.

'Oh, my dear boy. Of course you made a difference. You always do. You sell yourself far too short. You must have more faith in yourself, Crowely. _I _have faith in you. I always have. And time and again you've proven that faith to be justified. You do yourself a disservice.' Aziraphale let a playful smile light upon his lips. 'Clearly I'm a far better judge of character than you are, old chap.'

Crowely scoffed half-heartedly at the angel's sentiments, but he didn't reply. Still, he didn't move away, either, which was a good sign.

Aziraphale was acutely aware of the maudlin turn this conversation was taking, and he knew how difficult his friend found such things. Part of him thought he should change tack, change topic, change tone, change _something_. But another part felt that if one couldn't get a little maudlin after an attempted _Armageddon _then when _could _one justifiably do so? If there were ever any excuses to get a little mawkish, the near-destruction of everything you held dear had to be ranked in at least the top five.

And there were certain things that his dear demon needed hear.

'For the record,' Aziraphale half-whispered, tilting his head and seeking to meet Crowley's obstinately avoidant eye, 'I am immeasurably glad that you didn't _give up_. It would have been… It would have been terribly _disappointing _to save the world but to lose you. I'm not sure I would have been able to find very much joy in that success at all, to tell you the truth.' Aziraphale squeezed the demon's shoulders and Crowley, though keeping his chin tucked morosely into his chest, finally looked up at the angel. 'The fact of the matter is that the world is a far, far better place with you in it, Crowley. _My _world, at any rate. I would never have held out for so long or so willingly without you, dear chap. You really are the most… the most remarkable, unexpected, _wonderful _creature I've ever had the good fortune to meet. Quite honestly, I don't know what I'd do without you.'

Crowley slowly lifted his head and met Aziraphale's gaze square on. Seeing and seen. Knowing and known. Time seemed to stand still, the universe balancing on this kairotic moment, angel-blue eyes locked onto their serious, searching, serpentine counterparts.

And then with a flash those yellow eyes glittered, suddenly full of rakish, snakish, rascally charm. Crowley raised a laconic eyebrow and his mouth twitched into a grin. 'You say all that as if I didn't already know it, angel.'

Aziraphale exhaled sharply. A surprised laugh. An indignant huff. An incredulous gasp.

How he had put up with this incorrigible demon for so long, he had no idea. Absolute _nightmare_. Irreverent, impertinent, recalcitrant, mercurially saturnine, an endless source of trouble. An endless source of sarcasm, and cynicism, and inappropriately timed wit. An endless source of everything the angel was not.

An endless source of everything the angel _needed_.

The pair of them burst out laughing.

And as the demon through his riotous giggles leaned forward and rested his forehead on his angel's shoulder, Aziraphale couldn't help but wonder how he would have survived any of these six thousand years without him.


	5. Angel, Mi Casa Es Tu Casa, or something

~⧖~

They were still standing in the kitchen some thirty minutes later, their long-finished coffees swapped for two much more reasonable tumblers of brandy and a share-size bag of _Twiglets _leftover from last Christmas, which neither Aziraphale nor Crowley particularly liked, but which they continued to eat anyway.

'And I told him, look, are you _sure _you aren't over-reacting. I mean, it is just a _llama_, after all. But he just gave me one of his bitingly withering looks and just said "_Darling, if you had ever been in a small room with a creature like that, you wouldn't be asking me." _Which was unbelievably annoying, but what could I do? Couldn't exactly say "_Yeah, try forty bloody days and forty bloody nights with a whole bloody zoo on a giant bloody _boat_, then tell me you couldn't record the collaboration of the century because of one poxy llama..." _Ugh, _artists_… No wonder most of them end up in-' Crowley halted mid-tirade and raised an eyebrow. 'I'm sorry, am I _boring _you, angel?'

He had been prompted to ask this question by Aziraphale stifling a yawn and looking down at his wristwatch without even trying to be inconspicuous about it.

'What? Oh!' Aziraphale started to chuckle at his inadvertent tactlessness, but soon found himself taken over by yet another yawn. He turned his head and covered his mouth with his hand. 'Oh, dear me. I am sorry, my boy. Please do excuse me.'

The corners of Crowley's mouth twitched. 'You're tired.'

'Brilliant deduction, Holmes,' the angel snipped.

'Elementary, my dear Aziraphale.'

'He never actually said-' The angel's bookish pedantry was cut short by yet another yawn. 'Good Lord, that's irritating. I rarely get this tired, but-'

'-but it's been a bitch of a day,' Crowley finished for him.

'Well, not quite how I'd have phrased it but, essentially, yes.'

Crowley glanced at the angel's watch. 'Oof. When did it get so late?'

'_Early… _' Aziraphale muttered, prompting the demon to look back at him a touch more seriously. The angel had darkening circles around his eyes, and he was looking paler than usual. His shoulders were drooping, and even his curls looked lethargic. Crowley frowned.

'No offence, angel, but you look awful.' He held up his hands as Aziraphale bristled. 'Yeah, yeah, _who am I to talk_, I know, I know, don't get your wings in a knot. We're both _wrecked _and in some _serious _need of R and R. Starting with _sleep_. Come on.'

With a jerk of his head that intimated he wanted the angel to follow him, Crowley stalked out of the room.

He shouldn't have talked for so long, the demon internally chastised himself. What had he been thinking, babbling on about _nothing_ when Aziraphale was clearly so tired? Crowley found it difficult, at times, not to run off single-mindedly on trivial and sometimes incoherent tangents. Aziraphale had suggested that it was an outlet for the demon's anxiety, and Crowley thought he was probably right. Sometimes it was just easier to fill one's mind and mouth with ducks, or dolphins, or how Freddie Mercury ruined an album Crowley had spent _months_ setting in motion just because he didn't like Michael Jackson's choice of pet. Easier, at least, than it was to focus on the often more _distressing_ thoughts clamouring for attention in his overactive mind.

He couldn't keep running away, though. Everything always caught up with him, in the end, no matter how quickly his thoughts ran. No matter how quickly _he _ran. It was an inevitability.

And yet the appeal was always so relentlessly persistent. _Don't think about it _, said one half of him as he buried his head in alcohol, or sleep, or trashy tv shows (or novels, or the voices of the storytellers, back in those dark days before satellite television). And at the same time the other half of him pored incessantly over ever angle of the problem, poking into every nook and crevice, turning over every thorny fact in his hands until they bled. Asking questions relentlessly, thinking about it _relentlessly_.

It was irritating, and it gave him a headache.

'R and R?' Aziraphale queried from behind him, interrupting his thoughts.

_'Rest and Relaxation_,' replied Crowley.

'Ah. That makes sense.'

'Or rest and recuperation, I suppose.'

'Equally reasonable.'

'Or rest and restoration.'

'Yes, I think that I-'

'Rest and… Remuneration…? No, that doesn't really work. Reincarnation? Possibly. _Retribution_. Now that sounds suitably devilish, although perhaps a little _lively. _But then again-'

Aziraphale zoned out.

_Rest_.

Yes, Aziraphale thought, rest was precisely what he needed right now. What they _both _needed, if Crowley's anxious babbling was anything to go by. When the demon was tired, or stressed, or tired _and _stressed, that tendency manifested itself tenfold.

Aziraphale didn't sleep much. He didn't need to, not _really_. Not _often_. But at the end of the day he was housed in what was, essentially, a human body after all. There was only so much you could put those things through before they demanded at least some basic level of care. Yes, you could hold them together for a jolly long time, and going without sleep, or food, or _breathing _for long periods did not have the same disastrous effects on the occult and/or ethereal creature as it would wreak on your _bonafide _human, but nevertheless one did have to engage in some level of care for the thing or it would begin to cause problems. Especially when one's mental _alacrity _was in any way diminished, whether through distraction, or confusion, or exhaustion, or some excess of emotion. Anything which impeded the concentration required for supernaturally prolonging a naturally mortal body.

At this prompt, Aziraphale once again found his thoughts drifting back to Crowley, and how he had run into the burning bookshop. How he had driven his burning car all the way from London, whilst no doubt plagued with far more distraction, confusion, exhaustion, and emotional excess than any creature, supernatural or otherwise, should ever have to tangle with.

Yes. Rest was _precisely _what they both needed.

Crowley led him past the open-plan living room and up a few steps. Aziraphale noted with approbation the _Mona Lisa _sketch on the wall, smiling to himself as he recalled those lazy Florentine evenings, Crowely and Leonardo debating and discussing anything and everything as Aziraphale sat placidly back and listened, soaking in the atmosphere of the crimson and wine-soaked Italian sunset.

A familiar metallic twang pressed into the angel's consciousness as they passed the demon's office. It smelled like the sound of a harp, and it jangled through the air, centring on an ominously dark burn on the floor of the office doorway.

_Holy Water. _

This observation troubled Aziraphale far too much to process at present, and so he shoved it to the back of his mind with a pin in it _for later consideration_. For later _discussion_. But _later _was the keyword. Later.

Compartmentalisation was a very useful skill, when not abused, which, according to Crowley, the angel wantonly did.

Well. That was a problem for another time.

'Right,' Crowley sighed, stopping in front of a door a little further on down the hall from his office. 'Here we are. Bedroom. Er. It's a bit spartan, hope you don't mind. Bed's comfy though. Good pillows.' He cleared his throat.

'Oh, I'm not fussy,' Aziraphale replied, still trying not to glance back at that disturbing scene in the office.

'Hah! Not fussy? I thought Angels weren't supposed to lie?'

'Neither are they supposed to give away their flaming swords, or defy Heaven in order to prevent Armageddon, or have their own box at the Lyceum, or befriend _demons _. I fear I'm rather beyond _supposed to _, don't you, my dear?'

Crowley grinned, and Aziraphale relaxed a little.

'I wasn't lying, though,' Aziraphale continued. 'Right now I'd be quite happy to sleep in a _haystack_…' He paused as Crowley raised an eyebrow. '...Well, provided the hay was fresh, and there were no beasts of burden in the vicinity, and I had been provided with a decent blanket.'

'Well, I can offer you better than a haystack at least,' the demon laughed as he opened the door. 'I suppose,' he added thoughtfully, 'that you won't object to me being on top, in that case?'

'I'm sorry?'

'It's not that big of a deal, if you- I just always feel, er, I don't know, _vulnerable_, I suppose, if I'm not. Stupid, really.'

'I'm not sure that I-'

'I wasn't going to bring it up, but if you don't really mind, I mean…'

'Uh, well. If you- Yes, I suppose that's… fine.'

Aziraphale followed his friend into the bedroom with a perplexed expression, and looked around.

'Crowley?' he said, voice soft.

'Mm?'

'I hope you don't find this question in any way offensive, but…'

'What?'

'Why on Earth do you have _bunk beds_?'

The demon bristled.

'What do you mean? Why shouldn't I? What's wrong with bunk beds?'

With a stifled laugh, the angel replied, ''Nothing, I suppose. It's just a little unexpected.'

'I like sleeping up high, what of it?' Crowley hissed defensively.

'Nothing. Nothing at all, my dear. Perfectly reasonable.'

'Lots of people like bunk beds, Aziraphale. It's not_ weird_. It's weird to find it weird.'

'I don't find it weird. I simply wasn't expecting it.'

'I don't know why not. I am a snake, you know. Sort of.'

'Do snakes generally show a proclivity towards bunk beds?'

What— Well— I mean— Ugh. Look, do you want to sleep here, or not? I'll gladly sling you back out onto the street if you'd prefer. Go sleep on a _bench _if you are so opposed to bloody bunk beds…'

'No, no. I have no objection whatsoever. It is actually rather endearing, you know.'

Crowley sighed with resignation but no real irritation. After six thousand years he was used to the angel accusing him of being _sweet, _and _nice, _and _kind, _and _lovely_, and levelling other such wholly undemonic insults at him, and he refused to rise to the bait.

Then he drew his eyebrows together in consternation and gave the angel a long, cool stare. 'If you didn't know I was referring to top and bottom bunk,' he began, 'then what in Heaven's name did you _think _I was talking about just now?'

'Honestly I didn't have much of a clue,' Aziraphale replied. 'But you so often say such odd things that leave me puzzling over their meaning, I didn't really think much of it. You're like a walking Book of Prophecy, my dear boy. Endlessly vague, deliberately confusing, and so full of obscure, ill-used, and colloquial language that is almost impossible to follow anything you say. And yet on some occasions you produce a pearl of such of incalculably wonderful wisdom, albeit buried deep below all of the surface nonsense, that it is nevertheless worth persevering in listening to you.'

Crowley glared and opened his mouth, presumably to protest, but then he shut it again. Then he opened it again. Then he shut it again.

'Go to sleep, angel.'

Aziraphale grinned wickedly, and quite deliberately in a way which he knew from past experience annoyed the demon all the more because of how much he _appreciated _it. On one less than sober night by the Seine, Crowley had admitted that that particular smile left him feeling unsure as to whether he was more impressed, infuriated, or infatuated with the angel, and that it was extremely irritating. Paris always made the demon somewhat more _demonstrative _than London.

On this occasion Crowley contented himself with hissing at the angel through his teeth, which only made Aziraphale smile more.

'Ugh. I'm getting in the shower,' Crowley said, turning around and stalking back out into the hallway. 'Make yourself comfortable, or whatever. I don't know. I don't ever have _guests.._.'

And with that, the demon slunk away.

Finding himself alone, Aziraphale wandered around the room with great curiosity, peeking into drawers and little boxes, and admiring with interest the few but well-curated pieces of adorning the walls. As he did so, a sudden wave of, if not reality then certainly at least a weighty cognisance of the present moment, crashed into him.

This was Crowley's bedroom. Aziraphale was standing by himself in Crowley's bedroom, in Crowley's flat. And he was standing there because his Bookshop had burnt down. Because he had been discorporated. Whilst trying to speak with and question God Himself. Whilst attempting to stop Armageddon. To stop Heaven and Hell, essentially, from carrying out the Plan that they had all been working towards completing ever since Lucifer told God precisely where He could stick His ineffable wisdom.

Aziraphale was standing here, in Crowley's bedroom, in Crowley's flat, in a world that by all rights should currently be engulfed in flames and terrors and seas of blood, because, over their jobs and their duty, both he and the demon had chosen each other and the world. Because they'd _rebelled_. Or, perhaps, not so much rebelled, exactly, as upset the ineffable poker game by saying _Go Fish_ when the cards were on the table instead of playing the hands they were dealt.

He knew all of this, of course. These thoughts were by no means revelations. But they were realisations which ebbed and flowed over him like the surf on a beach, washing in, washing out. At one moment distant and only real in the way that the fathomless depths of the ocean are real to the child standing safely on the shore; at the next moment, drowning him.

Aziraphale expected that he would be a great deal more worried about all of this in a few hours. After a decent night's sleep. After the tide of his thoughts had come in. Because this was not high tide, he knew. This was a neap tide, a wayward eddy, a ripple from a distant storm. Already it was receding again, and the angel was once more standing on the sand.

He imagined, in a dispassionate, cool kind of a way, that it was rather like when one receives a nasty cut and the shock of it keeps the pain from being immediately felt. That it was similar to how when a wound is deep it can take a few moments before the blood appears, having more layers to rush through before reaching the surface.

It was a disquieting thought, and Aziraphale turned from it with a resolute grimace. _Que Sera, Sera_, he thought. _Who sang that? Wasn't it Doris Day? _

One of Crowley's shirts was hanging, rumpled, over the back of a chair in front of an ornate dressing table. The shirt had a yellow paint stain on it, right over where the demon's heart would be, were he wearing it.

_When I was young I fell in love, and I asked my sweetheart, What lies ahead? _

Aziraphale wandered over to it and idly ran his fingers over the sleek black material, silently thanking God that Crowley had come out of all this alive and relatively undamaged.

_Will we have rainbows, day after day? _

Aziraphale didn't know whether God had had any role in that, whether He had planned it that way, or if they had somehow side-stepped His plans, or if, indeed, He'd had any Plan at all.

_Here's what my sweetheart said. _

After today, Aziraphale wasn't sure whether He was even paying any attention to _any _of it anymore. Whether He was watching, anymore. Whether he was listening, anymore. But the angel thanked Him, anyway.

_Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will future's not ours to see._ _Que sera, se-_

'All right?' Crowley said as he wandered back into the room, scrubbing at his head with a towel. 'Doris Day, right? From… What was that film?'

Aziraphale jumped. 'Crowley? I thought you were going to have a shower?'

'Yeah… I did?' the demon said, gesturing to his still-dripping hair.

'Oh,' Aziraphale blinked. 'That was quick.'

'Not really?' Crowley replied with a questioning expression. 'You okay?'

'Yes. Yes. I'm- Yes. Must have- What is it that you always accuse me of doing? _Zoning out_?'

'Hmmm.'

Aziraphale looked Crowley up and down, only now registering his appearance. He was now out of his fire-damaged suit and wearing black and dark purple paisley print pajamas. Silk, obviously. They had dark red detailing along the edges, and small golden buttons which matched the shade of the demon's eyes almost exactly. Aziraphale couldn't help but reluctantly admire the clothes, ostentatious as they were. Crowley's sartorial choices were wildly divergent from his own, but Aziraphale had to admit that the demon did have exquisite taste. Even his sleepwear was aesthetically exceptional.

'Oh!' the angel exclaimed suddenly, placing a hand on his forehead. 'I don't have any-' He sighed. 'Well, I was going to say I don't have any night-clothes. But I don't really have any _anything_, do I? Everything burned with the Bookshop. Oh dear...'

'I don't mean to state the obvious, but you are an _Angel,_ angel. You can just miracle up what you need, can't you?

'Oh, I know, but- Well, it's not the same, is it? And I'm not really supposed to use miracles to acquire material items. Buggers up the economy. Heaven doesn't look too kindly on that sort of thing.'

'Bit late to be worrying about what Heaven wants you to do.'

Aziraphale nodded distractedly. 'Quite. But still…' He wrung his hands and clicked his tongue against his teeth. 'I'm not entirely comfortable with using _miracles _right now, to be completely honest with you. They _audit_. You know that. Location _and _general miracling category. And I'm sure they can pull up more details, if they really want to. They don't normally pay much attention under normal circumstances, but these _aren't _normal circumstances. I'd really rather not have them know I'm here.' He looked the damp demon up and down apprehensively. 'It could put you in danger. Both of us.'

Crowley stared at the angel for a few moments before his brain seemed to kick back into gear, and he replied: 'Right. Yes. Of course. Good thinking. Well, we can go shopping or something tomorrow, I suppose. And as for tonight…'

Crowley waved his hand casually at his wardrobe, walked over to it, and removed some freshly-miracled pajamas in the angel's size. He handed them to Aziraphale.

'Here you go,' he said. 'Sorted. Miracling up clothes in my own flat is nothing out of the ordinary, is it? Easy peasy. Disaster averted.'

The material was of a muted turquoise colour with pink and silver accents. Silk, of course. Terribly excessive, really, and not at all what the angel would have chosen for himself, but nonetheless undeniably beautiful, and of an excellent quality. And pink and turquoise _did _suit Aziraphale's complexion. Or so he had been told.

The angel hummed appreciatively. 'Very nice,' he murmured. 'Thank you, Crowley. For this and, well, for everything, really.'

Crowley shuffled on his feet. 'Yeah, well, can't really sleep in _that, _can you?' he said, gesturing somewhat derisively to Aziraphale's shirt and tie, sweater vest, and sensible trousers.

In the back of his mind, Aziraphale was distantly aware that he should probably say or do something rather than just stand there and gaze, smiling, at his brusque, sullen, pajama-ed demon, but he didn't really want to stop. Aziraphale didn't mind the future not being his to see, if Crowley was still there to be seen. Crowley was an anchor. Crowely was a port. Crowley was _alive._

_He is still here._ _He is still here. _

The waves of the angel's thoughts were ebbing once more, and everything was beginning to feel dreamlike. What if he woke up and the bookshop was still there? What if he woke up and Crowley was _not _?

He had to hang on to the reality in front of him in case it slipped through his fingers. As it so very nearly had done.

That was why Aziraphale felt somewhat disinclined to stop gazing.

That, and the demon was _awfully _pretty.

'Oi, angel!' Crowley snapped his fingers in front of Aziraphale's face. 'Stay with me.'

'What? Were you saying something?'

'Yes!'

'Oh. Sorry. Not quite on top form, right now. Nothing personal. ...Well. I'd best go and get changed. Do you mind if I use your shower? The slightest sniff of brimstone gets into one's pores something wicked, and I'd rather not fall asleep reeking to high Hea- Er. Or quite the opposite.'

With a concerned frown which drifted into a resigned sigh, Crowley replied, 'Yeah, sure. Do what you like, angel. _Mi casa es tu casa_. Or something.'

'Thanks. And it was from _The Man Who Knew Too Much_. The song.'

'Oh?'

'Yes.'

'I don't think I've seen that.'

'You'd like it.'

'You think?'

'Oh, yes. Assassins and intrigue, capable female lead - Doris Day, of course. Perhaps we could watch it together, some time? With a bottle of, oh, I don't know, some nice red or another. What do you say?''

Aziraphale watched the demon's face carefully as the meaning behind his words sank in. _We will have time _, they said. _We will watch old films, and we will drink wine on your sofa, and we will _survive _because I will not accept any alternatives. Because, come what may, we are in this together. And because, remarkably, we are still here, and we are still us _. _And this is what we do. _

'Yeah,' Crowley nodded with a smile. 'Sounds like a plan to me.'


	6. Awake

~⧖~

When Aziraphale returned from the bathroom, washed and scrubbed and smelling decidedly less Apocalyptic, he expected to find the demon fast asleep.

Instead, he found Crowley emphatically _not _asleep. He was _pacing _. And he flinched when Aziraphale spoke his name.

'Huh!? What?!' The demon snapped his head around. 'Oh. Aziraphale. Right, Hi. Uh. Shower… good?'

Aziraphale nodded, narrowing his eyes. 'Fine, fine. Thank you.'

'Yep. Good. Great. Well.'

Crowley picked up a glass of water from his dressing table, then set it back down. He jammed his hands into the pockets of his pajamas, then took them back out. He looked at the angel, and then looked away, drumming his thin fingers incessantly.

'My dear, are you quite all right?'

'Yep. 'Positively _stellar_.' The demon stared intently for a moment, then moved his gaze away with a blank expression. 'Well. Goodnight.'

With his head down, Crowley pushed past Aziraphale, climbed the ladder into his top bunk, and pulled his duvet covers firmly over his head.

Aziraphale chewed his lip, balling and unballing his fists at his sides. He wanted to ask Crowley if he was all right. He wanted to ask him what was wrong. He wanted to ask if there was anything he could do to help.

But, of course, he already knew the answers to those questions, didn't he? Because Crowley wasn't all right, he was no more "all right" than Aziraphale was. They could talk, and laugh, and be hopeful, but they couldn't be _all right. _Not yet. One day, perhaps, but certainly not yet.

And what could Aziraphale possibly do to help? Everything they could do had been done, and now all that was left for this evening was to curl up and close one's eyes and weather the storm. To brave the darkness and hope that the sun would be shining in the morning. No, there was nothing that Aziraphale could do right now to make Crowley feel better. Or himself, for that matter. Right now was not a time for feeling better. Right now they both needed to simply sleep it off.

Things would look brighter in the morning.

With one last look at the pile of blankets under which his demon lay coiled in on himself Aziraphale flicked the light switch and climbed into bed in the dark.

The sun would rise, soon.

It was four AM, and Crowley couldn't sleep.

Or, rather, he _had _been able to sleep, at some point. He'd fallen asleep quite easily, in fact, shortly after his head had hit his very expensive pillow.

Soon after that, the nightmares had started.

He had woken up, panicked and in snake form, writhing and tangled in sweat-soaked blankets, gasping for air. Had he still been in his human guise he would no doubt have woken to find himself yelling - as it was he merely hissed and struggled and lashed out against the invisible terrors clawing at him through his dreams.

The nightmares had been quite bad.

The snake was shivering - at least as far as snakes do shiver, which in fact isn't at all, except for psychologically. Crowley suspected that other snakes, snakes that weren't him, didn't actually psychologically shiver, either. Crowley was however, and much to his present dismay, quite emphatically _him _, and thus was presently psychologically shivering so much that it seemed his head must have been locked in an industrial freezer.

The ice in his mind was directly contrasted by the fire coursing through his veins. His skin felt like it was burning. Whether his elevated temperature had been caused _by_ the nightmares or _had_ _caused_ them he didn't know. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to _think._

Crowley was not, in that moment, a particularly happy snake.

He tried to force himself back to sleep. He knew that he needed it. He knew that he was _beyond _needing it. He couldn't remember the last time he had properly slept. Slept without tossing and turning, without waking up every thirty minutes in a cold sweat and with a fresh batch of worries to add to his ever-growing collection. His body ached with exhaustion. He _needed _to _sleep_.

But unfortunately Crowley's mind was not cooperating. It seemed to be ruthlessly intent on attacking itself. All of his defence systems were running on overtime, and the screeching alarms alerting him to _Danger! Danger! Danger! _were constantly blaring inside his skull. He'd begin to drift off only to suddenly snap awake again, feeling as though he were being smothered, or chased, or simply _watched _. It was like trying to sleep on a tightrope without a safety-net. Above a tank of piranhas. Piranhas with flamethrowers and a personal vendetta against him.

His dreams would begin innocuously enough. Words, images, memories, innocent and random, would float into his mind like clouds, light and fluffy and essentially harmless. But then the skies would darken and those clouds would blacken and crush out all light, heralding with a calm and certain confidence the oncoming storm.

And then he would wake up, or he wouldn't.. It made little difference either way. Either the nightmares would terrify him, or his waking thoughts would terrorise him. He wasn't sure which was worse. The nightmares felt real, but his anxieties _were _real. At least he could wake up from a nightmare. His waking fears were omnipresent and relentless.

Image upon image, thought upon thought, memory upon memory pulled through his head like beads on some infernal rosary. Each a link in a chain. Each connecting to another. Each ushering in the next with an unstoppable determination.

_Riesling and olives, sitting in the backroom, bickering and laughing, half-seriously planning a holiday together. Aziraphale arguing for Kyoto, Crowley for Tibet. Nowhere could be better than the bookshop. _

**_Hello? Aziraphale? For Go- For Sa- For somebody's sake! Aziraphale!_**

_Beams creaking and cracking, paper crackling, bookshelves crashing. _

_Should have come sooner. _

**_Mortals can hope for death, or redemption. You can hope for nothing._**

_Icy water and shattered glass beneath his knees and palms. Scorching, searing, scourging flames. _

_He was nowhere._

**_You'd be amazed at the kind of things they can do to you, down there._**

**_I'd imagine they are very similar to the kind of things they can do to one up there._**

_Realising the obvious, shifting away, backing off. Back before it was all so easy. _

_Scoreless, searching, scarcely a friend. _

_He was everywhere. _

**_You can't refuse to be who you are._**

_I know. I know, I know. _

_I know who I am. I know who he is. _

_I know. I know. I _know_. _

**_We'll be Godfathers._**

_A persimmon in Jericho, stolen from a market stall, tossed to an impish child who runs off, laughing. _

_The angel smiles. _

_I did that. _

**_the screaming of small children trapped by back seatbelts forever._**

**_I did that._**

**_That's my fault._**

_Acrid smoke. Burning metal. Burning leather. Burning tarmac, cars, people. _

_My fault. _

**_Aziraphale! Aziraphale, you- you stupid-_**

_A demon's phone number written in the back of an angel's bible. _

**_Are you here?!_**

_No. _

**_What? Oh. Oh. Yes. Fine. Jolly good._**

_Hello? _

**_I'd just like to say, if we don't get out of this, that…_**

_We are getting out of this. _

_God knows at what cost, but we are. _

**_He thought briefly of the fourteenth century._**

'Aziraphale!?'

Crowley gasped with a start, hearing himself, his hissing, sibilliant snake-voice, crying out for the angel. His heart was racing.

_Where was he? Where was Aziraphale!? _

On the bunk beneath him, Crowley heard a soft murmur, and felt the small movements of the bed as Aziraphale turned over in his sleep.

_London. Mayfair. His Flat. His Bed. His World. It's okay. _

He was here.

He was safe.

For now.

Maybe.

Perhaps.

Until Heaven or Hell decided to come for them. If they decided to come for them. However they decided to come for them.

_Be on the alert_.

No. Crowley _could not _sleep.

Aziraphale was struggling to fall asleep.

He had settled into the bottom bunk, comfortable beneath cool Egyptian cotton sheets, head resting on a perfectly plushy pillow, and pressingly aware that his situation was primed for slumber, yet for some reason finding himself quite unable to attain it.

The angel lay on his back and stared straight up. He was just able to make out the slats of the top bunk above him in the darkness, up where Crowley lay, sleeping. His eyes cast listlessly about, finding shapes in the the darkness, patterns in the grains in the wood.

He saw an apple, and a swaying, curving line which almost seemed to slither and crawl about the moment he looked away from it, and, similarly in motion, he saw the pages of a book, dancing as though they were fluttering in the breeze.

An Apple. A Snake. The Pages of a Book.

_Why those things? _Aziraphale wondered idly to himself. At a glance it all seemed fairly self-explanatory, the book, the snake and the apple. One's mind was instinctively, and perhaps inevitably, drawn to _Crowley_. But leaving his own personal leanings aside (could one leave personal leanings aside when questioning what was, essentially, a makeshift Rorschach test?) Aziraphale tried to explore other avenues. What might these things, together, represent? Knowledge? Temptation? Original Sin? In that order? And with nothing more to consider, and nothing more to question? Simple, clear cut, Right and Wrong answers. Those are certainly the conclusions he would once have drawn. That he would once have believed.

But now?

Aziraphale suspected it was all rather more _complicated _than that.

For it was not the book but the _apple_, once bitten, that gave knowledge, was it not? Ultimate knowledge. Knowledge weighted with a terrible burden.

**_{There's Right and there's Wrong.}_**

When Adam and Eve ate of the apple, they saw their own nakedness. They realised their own vulnerabilities, and in doing so became aware of the vulnerabilities of others. They learned to see _themselves _in others, and to see the _other _in themselves. They saw how to hurt, and how they could be hurt.

**_{If you do Wrong when you're told to do Right, you deserve to be punished.} _**

They learned what they had to _protect_. Saw all that they had to lose. Not their eviction from the Garden - that False Idyll had been lost the moment that their eyes had been opened (for opened eyes could see the bars of the cage). No, they saw that they risked the loss of their beliefs. Their habits. Their customs. The world upon which they had constructed everything they knew. Indeed, their very _lives_… All were now at risk. All were now assailable. That which had been solid had become fragile.

**_{I gave it away.}_**

Including the chains which had once held them.

**_{I had to.}_**

That, then, was the Apple.

And the snake?

And the snake.

The snake had given Eve her courage. The snake had prompted Eve to question, to rebel, to _think _. The snake had assisted Eve in taking her life. Taking it from out of the hands of another and into her own.

**_{Get up there and make some trouble.}_**

Her life.

Her choice.

Her punishment.

Their punishment.

**_{Bit of an overreaction.}_**

The snake had never forced, never pushed, never even coerced, manipulated, or beguiled. The snake had merely told the truth. Relentlessly, and without pandering, patronising, or protecting. Simply the truth. Nothing more. Nothing less. But truth is a rare commodity with _those people_. It's precious, as enticing as it is dangerous.

But why should it be dangerous? _He _made it so. Not the Snake.

_You will certainly not die, the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat it your eyes shall be opened, and you will be like God, knowing Good and Evil_.

It wasn't a lie. The apple didn't rob Eve of her immortality. _God _did. Why did He do that? He didn't have to do that. He didn't have to do _any _of this, so-

**_Best not to speculate, really._**

_And God said to the woman, What is this that you done? _

_The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate_.

**_{People knew the difference between Right and Wrong in those days._**

God accused Adam, and Adam blamed Eve. Adam accused Eve, and Eve blamed the Snake.

**_{Well, yes. _****Think** **_about it.}_**

The book.

**_Just because you're an angel, doesn't mean you have to be a fool._**

The words, he needed the _words_, he was always seeking _the words _. The words to interpret, to guide, to mold and to be molded (whilst keeping out the mould, his cellar was so prone to damp, did the cellar burn, too?)-

But the pages wouldn't keep still. They were turning and turning, too fast for him. Aziraphale couldn't read what was written. Written right in front of him, but he couldn't see it. If he could only find put what was _truly _written- -

**_I don't see why it matters what is written. It can always be crossed out_**** .**

Or burned.

**_It might be written differently somewhere else. Where you can't read it. In bigger letters. Underlined. Twice._**

If only he could see the _words_, the words written in the book. Written on the pages, on the pages _in the wood_, the wood of the _tree_, of the _apple_, of the _Garden_, the words written in _His Book_...

Aziraphale opened his eyes with a start. He hadn't realised he'd closed them. A glance over at the digital clock glowing red in the darkness revealed that in the past thirty seconds an hour and a half had passed by.

He must have fallen asleep.

At least that explained all of those moving images in the woodwork.

The angel was about to curl up and try his hand a few more hours of sleep when he felt a familiar movement on the bed near his feet. There was a sound of quiet rustling as something moved through the cotton sheets. Aziraphale lifted his arm an inch or so from the bed, and smiled to himself as he felt the well-known weight of a serpentine body slithering into his sleeve-cuff and wrapping itself around his wrist.

The snake nosed his way up the angel's arm and over his shoulder. Crowley poked the top of his nose out from the angel's shirt and nestled his head into the comfortable hollow above the angel's collarbone.

'Can't sleep?' Aziraphale murmured.

'Not _good _sssssleep...' Crowley hissed in quiet reply. '...Did I wake you?'

'No. No. I was awake.'

'You can't sssssssleep either?'

'Not _good _sleep.'

'...Nightmaresssss?'

'Something like that.'

Crowley's tongue flickered from his mouth, and Aziraphale felt a poorly repressed quiver ripple over the length of the small snake's form.

'Oh, my dear thing,' the angel said softly. 'You too, hm? Oh, dear. Well, I'm here, now. I'm here, my boy. I'm here. You try to get some rest. I'm here.'

Aziraphale gently placed his hand over the serpent, just below his head, and felt a surge of resolute will well up inside him. If He in His Book had written any harm to come to this creature, then Aziraphale would… not _burn _the book, of course, as that would, both metaphorically and literally, be a travesty. But he would certainly take a bottle of Correction Fluid and a Red Pen to it.

Crowley's heart, beating so close to the angel's own, began to settle back into a less frantic rhythm. Aziraphale's eyes began to close.

And, in the grey half-darkness of the city's summer dawn, they slept.


End file.
